THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.
The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.

The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make ¡°regime change¡± in Iraq legal.

Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, told the meeting that ¡°the US had already begun ¡®spikes of activity¡¯ to put pressure on the regime¡±.

The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did.

He forced the US to keep soliders in his face for the long term.
besides he was involved in teaching hate, funding of terror and the incitment of violence. If US forces weren't in his face then in time he wouldn't be so powerless

Fair enough, but how many times did we hear Bush, or his aides, tell us that he hadn't already decided to go to war before he started bringing up the subject in the fall of 2002? This report as well as the recently released British memos undercut that assertion. Granted all politicians lie, but when it comes to a war that's cost probably tens of thousands of dead, several times that number of grievously wounded, and promises to be a drain on the US budget, military, and international prestige for years to come, decency calls for simple honesty with the public and our allies.

He forced the US to keep soliders in his face for the long term.
besides he was involved in teaching hate, funding of terror and the incitment of violence. If US forces weren't in his face then in time he wouldn't be so powerless

Joo, I gotta say, I do get miffed when you keep saying "US" forces. They were not by any means alone.

Fair enough, but how many times did we hear Bush, or his aides, tell us that he hadn't already decided to go to war before he started bringing up the subject in the fall of 2002? This report as well as the recently released British memos undercut that assertion. Granted all politicians lie, but when it comes to a war that's cost probably tens of thousands of dead, several times that number of grievously wounded, and promises to be a drain on the US budget, military, and international prestige for years to come, decency calls for simple honesty with the public and our allies.

The US went into Iraq to change the strategic map in the mid east and so it could be in a position to force regimes in the mid east to crack down on Al Qaida .

If Bush announced the real reasons for the war it would make it harder for the US to get governments in the region to do what the US wants. Any crack down on Al Qaida or other militants would then be politically harder for mid east regimes than it is now.

He forced the US to keep soliders in his face for the long term.
besides he was involved in teaching hate, funding of terror and the incitment of violence. If US forces weren't in his face then in time he wouldn't be so powerless

So .... you think this war is teaching Iraqiis to LOVE America?

Oh brother...........

Containment cost a hell of a lot less than this war, both monitarily and in terms of human resources.

As far as your other charges, yes he probably is guilty of them, but that's still no justification for starting this war.

The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there ?a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things "martyrs" was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such "martyrs" was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.

The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government ?and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen ?got the message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about.

Quote:

So, we went from WMDs, a threat to US security, to now... "He was teaching Iraqis to hate other people" That's just great!!!

Yep hate from the mid east makes terrorists.

There was this event called 9-11.

They got to stop , if they don't want to stop then don't expect the US to let them get away with it anymore.

Containment cost a hell of a lot less than this war, both monitarily and in terms of human resources.

Containment cost the US 9-11.

But containment enables the slaughter. Containment kills.

The slaughter of innocents is the worst cost of containment, but it is not the only cost of containment.

Containment allows Saddam Hussein to control the political climate of the Middle East. If it serves his interest to provoke a crisis, he can shoot at U.S. planes. He can mobilize his troops near Kuwait. He can support terrorists and destabilize his neighbors. The United States must respond to these provocations.

Worse, containment forces the United States to keep large conventional forces in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region. That costs much more than money.

The existence of al Qaeda, and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are part of the price the United States has paid to contain Saddam Hussein.

The link is clear and direct. Since 1991 the United States has had forces in Saudi Arabia. Those forces are there for one purpose only: to defend the kingdom (and its neighbors) from Iraqi attack. If Saddam Hussein had either fallen from power in 1991 or fulfilled the terms of his cease-fire agreement and disarmed, U.S. forces would have left Saudi Arabia.

But Iraqi defiance forced the United States to stay, and one consequence was dire and direct. Osama bin Laden founded al Qaeda because U.S. forces stayed in Saudi Arabia.

This is the link between Saddam Hussein's defiance of international law and the events of Sept. 11; it is clear and compelling. No Iraqi violations, no Sept. 11.

He forced the US to keep soliders in his face for the long term.
besides he was involved in teaching hate, funding of terror and the incitment of violence. If US forces weren't in his face then in time he wouldn't be so powerless

Joo, I gotta say, I do get miffed when you keep saying "US" forces. They were not by any means alone.

And btw, containment was a more efficient use of resources.

Sorry England helped too.

Containment was too hard for the US and the US could not fight Al Qaida and contain Saddam at the same time.

The way the mideast was was a threat to the US. Let the Khomenists , the Bathists , those who follow Nasser and those who follow Bin Laden give up their war. If they dont' then the US is right to throw everything it has at them.

The US went into Iraq to change the strategic map in the mid east and so it could be in a position to force regimes in the mid east to crack down on Al Qaida .

If Bush announced the real reasons for the war it would make it harder for the US to get governments in the region to do what the US wants. Any crack down on Al Qaida or other militants would then be politically harder for mid east regimes than it is now.

So Bush lied to grease the wheels towards war. And today those lies undercut his credibility and make it harder for those regimes to crack down on al Qaida, not to mention less popular for even traditional allies to help us out.

He could have sold the war with a consistent argument that was both indisputably true and one that everyone could agree with: human rights. Saddam jailed, tortured, and murdered hundreds of thousands of Muslims and banned religous worship. Ending would that would have beeen an agenda ordinary Arabs could have supported; it would also have put the spotlight on other Arab countries with similar practices.

Instead we got a series of different arguments--the "throw everything against the wall and see what sticks" approach. When someone wants you to do something and he keeps coming up with some new reason, and then the evidence he has to back those reasons up turns out to be false, are you gonna think he's being straight with you?

I understand your point. HoweverI don't think Bush lied , I do think he didn't say everything about US motives. I think if he had done so it would have made it harder for the US to cause behavior changes by mid east regimes.

This is why the US invaded Iraq.

Quote:

We have also argued, and continue to be amazed, that the single
greatest failure of the Bush administration in this war has been
its inability to give a coherent explanation of why it invaded
Iraq. The public justification -- that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction -- was patently absurd on its face. You do not invade
a country with a year's warning if you are really afraid of WMD.
The incoherence of the justification was self-evident prior to
the war, and the failure to find WMD was merely icing on the
cake. The consequence was a crisis of confidence that was a very
unlikely outcome after Sept. 11 and which the administration
built for itself. In other words, the decision to invade Iraq
was, from our point of view, inevitable following the failure of
the covert war. What was not inevitable was the catastrophic
failure to explain the invasion and the resulting crisis of
confidence.

The clearest explanation for this failure has to do with Saudi
Arabia and the U.S. relation to the kingdom -- a relationship
that goes far beyond the Bush family or either political party.
Saudi Arabia was one of the reasons for the invasion. The U.S.
intent was to frighten the Saudis into policy change,
demonstrating (a) that the Saudis were now surrounded by U.S.
troops and (b) that the United States was no longer influenced by
the Saudis. The goal was to force the Saudis to change their
behavior toward financing al Qaeda. Stating this goal publicly
would have destabilized the Saudi regime, however, and the United
States wanted policy change, not regime change. Therefore,
Washington preferred to appear the fool rather than destabilize
Saudi Arabia.

If this is the explanation -- and we emphatically do believe,
from all analysis and sources, that the administration did have a
much more sophisticated strategy in place on Iraq than it has
ever been able to enunciate -- then it was one with severe costs.
Apart from the specific failures in the war, the generation of a
massive crisis of confidence in the United States over the Iraq
campaign has become a strategic reality of the wider war. To the
extent that this is a war of perception -- and on some level, all
wars are -- the perception that the United States is deeply
divided is damaging. The actual debate is over the Iraq campaign
and not the war as a whole, but this has increasingly been lost
in the clamor. There is much more consensus on the war as a whole
than might appear.

He forced the US to keep soliders in his face for the long term.
besides he was involved in teaching hate, funding of terror and the incitment of violence. If US forces weren't in his face then in time he wouldn't be so powerless

None of his neighboring countries were worried about him anymore. He was a spent force, but a handy scapegoat for the imperialist aggressors to use to try to mask their imperial aggression. Seems to have worked pretty well too on all the grown ups who still wait up on Christmans Eve to see if they can catch a peek of Santa. Of course, Santa Bush ain't gonna bring you nothin' because all those fabulous war time profits will go to the folks who put him in office. No, I don't mean your typical brain dead Republican voter either.